1. Technical Field
The present invention is directed to an imaging system contained in an electronic imager. More precisely, the invention is directed to an imaging system having one or more image memory buffers interspersed between the functional portions of the imager.
2. Related Art
Most conventional imaging systems operate in an essentially linear fashion with respect to the functional blocks of the system. That is, acquired data is processed completely through the each and every functional processing step from acquisition to final storage or transmission before another image can be acquired.
In a conventional imaging system, light passes through a lensing system and onto the image sensing circuitry. Next, the output of the image sensing circuitry is sampled and collated by interface circuitry. A process of simple compression by the interface circuitry can be performed at this stage. Then, the image information is sent to additional image processing circuitry in which other high level functions are performed on the image in accordance with the ultimate intended use of the imaging system. This linear flow does not, however, allow for dynamic changes in the imaging system state, not does it allow the system to adapt to faster or slower acquisition schedules.
A user may change the state of the imaging system and thereby affect the operational characteristics of the imaging system, causing additional power to be expended every time an image is sent through the process. For example, a user may acquire images on an intermittent basis, thus necessitating both a power up and a power down of the various functional stages of the imager.
The imaging system may be required to turn on or “power up” upon the processing of each image. This wastes power usage and time.
Additionally, there is no mechanism to implement a method of “gather-and-wait” at the intersection of each of the functional processing unit, before the data is to be acted on by such a functional processing unit. As such, conventional imaging systems waste unnecessary time and power in the pipeline processing of images.
This is inefficient and cumbersome. Each successive image requires the processing of the entire image to a final state before the next image can be acquired. Additionally, power is wasted on each individual passage of image data collected by the digital circuitry as each digital image passes through all of the various stages of the digital imaging system in order, at the time of acquisition. Many other problems and disadvantages of the prior art will become apparent to one skilled in the art after comparing such prior art with the present invention as described herein.